Sadie suggests that CNN and Al Jazeera

…don’t know the difference between peace makers and a pace maker. Good work by the authorities-they stopped him. The LEFT crowned him the Prince of Peace. Kimber Heinz, a writer for the far-left website Truthout, unluckily chose to profile Abdo in a 2010 article entitled, “One Year After Fort Hood: The Missing Story of Muslim Peacemaking.”

“We must lift up the stories and ongoing work of Muslim peacemakers like Naser Abdo,” Heinz wrote. CNN and Al Jazeera also both featured glowing segments on Abdo’s quest to obtain CO status.

But there were others who immediately condemned Abdo’s attempt to dodge combat service. The American Islamic Forum for Democracy, an organization led by Dr. Zhudi Jasser, urged the military to reject Abdo’s request last year.

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Muslims can’t kill Muslims? Since when? Mo Hammad’s wife, the one who poisoned him, was not Muslim? Most of the civilian deaths in Iraq, casualties in the Civil War there, weren’t they Muslims, killed by other Muslims? The various dynasties and whatever in seven centuries of Muslim rule in Spain, Muslim on Muslim, no?

Charles Martel

Michael, Michael, Michael: Don’t you understand that Islam is a rich, vareigated, diverse potpourri of beliefs and sentiments? Don’t you understand that for every Muslim who’s out beating a woman, killing a Hindu or blowing up a pizza restaurant in Tel Aviv, there’s a zillion out running orphanages, rescuing stray dogs, passing legislation that tolerates homosexuals, and singing Kumbaya with Christians?

It’s hard to say. It would be objectively better for Abdo not to be in the US military, leaking secrets or pulling Hasan Two. Then again, dodging the service also provides propaganda for Islam and anti-American sentiments.

So we lose either way.

Oldflyer

One lesson is clear to me. When you try to assimilate the belief set of Islam into an open western society, you are on a slippery slope.
This incident illustrates the problem graphically. You can’t deny all together Muslims entry into the military; that would be discrimination, profiling, etc. ad nauseum. Yet, when you take them in, you find that there are so many potential strictures associated with the religion that the potential for conflict is ever present. You cannot be certain where the loyalties will lie when it materializes. g.
I know the argument is made that there are many loyal and patriotic Muslims in our society; and in the military. But, we must ask if that is because they choose to ignore elements of their religious code? When it is no longer convenient, will those elements be cited as justification to opt out of duty; or worse yet to lash back violently? We are often told that only a minority hew to the Wahabbi, or other interpretations of the Koran that lead to radical Islam. Still, it is a huge problem when the guiding precepts of a religion are readily open to this type of interpretation. I know of no other religion in which that is the case. (Some Atheist may try to cite Christianity and the Old Testament; don’t bother. Christianity is obviously not based on the OT. I expect some will also cite the violent history of the Christian church. To which I would respond that if Islam could evolve beyond the middle ages, we would be ok.)
There is no easy answer in a free society to the questions I raised. We can, and must, that our laws be respected, and that the freedom we offer to others be reciprocated. It is predictable that more and more exemptions and accommodations will be demanded. They must not be countenanced.

Note: Women attempting to pull this stunt will be stoned to death for Haram.

Charles Martel

We keep being assured that there are gradations of Islam, ranging from a benign, Sufi-like countenance to a militant branch that despises even laughter itself. The problem with that description is that it is nonsense. It is advanced by people who cannot tell the difference between degrees of devotion to a religion and what the religion itself teaches.

Do a compare and contrast between Christianity and Islam. Christians, like Muslims, differ in their degrees of devotion to their religion. But the “pure” form of each religion calls for entirely different attitudes toward the world. Except in the realm of lunacy, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, no Christian leader or theologian can call for the violent conversion of pagans to Christianity, nor justify the murder of captives, the torture of criminals, the taking of plunder, or the denigration of women based on his own scripture.

The opposite holds true for imams and other Muslim teachers. The Qu’ran is rife with admonitions to do all these things in the name of Allah. It is not as though some “liberal” Muslim can engage the local imam in a debate about how peaceful Islam is at its heart and come out a winner. There are far too many violent passages in the Qu’ran for him to have a leg to stand on. (The specious argument that there are Qu’ranic passages that teach love of neighbor and tolerance shows ignorance of the doctrine of abrogation, where Allah revises himself as he goes along.)

For the past few weeks the last thing I’ve been reading before lights out is the Qu’ran. There are occasional lyrical passages in it where Allah has Mohammed recite the glories of creation. But let me tell you, the book is a turgid, endless recitation of Allah’s determination to shove people into Islam’s bordello paradise or torture-filled hell. There is not a scintilla of the grace, or love, or actual affection for God you find in the psalms, or the earthy wit and wisdom of the parables. It’s Allah endlessly pushing the furniture around as loudly as he can because. . . he can.

Nor is there any commandment to love one’s enemy as oneself. The world is divided into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb—that which has submitted to Allah’s will and that which will eventually be brought under his will. America and Europe are Dar al-Harb, and will be brought into the realm of Islam by whatever means necessary.

How do we fight Islam on our home turf, knowing that the religion despises almost everything about our culture?
For one thing, exercising our First Amendment rights and calling out Islam at every possible opportunity to explain its approval of violence and open desire for theocracy. (At the same time, ask Islam’s leftist apologists to clearly explain why they support a theocratical, woman-hating religion.) Every time I have seen an informed Christian debate a Muslim, he has obliterated the Muslim’s arguments, both in terms of Qu’ranic knowledge and use of simple logic.

On a less abstract level, some very simple rules: No publically funded foot baths or other accouterments of Muslim worship at any public institutions unless members of other or no religions are free to use them, too. No school social studies class re-enactments of what it’s like to be a Muslim by having students dress in supposedly Muslim garb or recite the Five PIllars. No segregated swimming pools; one for Muslim men whose libidos are excited by mere ankles; one for women, those creatures whose only usefulness apparently is to excite and serve men’s sexual urges. No use of sharia law in any officially sanctioned way, and prosecution of anybody who attempts to enforce its provisions.

We can make it clear that while Muslims are free to believe Mohammed’s recitations all they want, they are not free to act on many of them. Establish a clear line in the sand and be vigilant about challenging Islam at every opportunity.

SADIE

Charles Martel

Excellent post. When you’re finished with the Qu’ran the linked scholarly review of the Book and it’s author is a very good companion piece from 1998.

Charles Martel: no Christian leader or theologian can call for the violent conversion of pagans to Christianity, nor justify the murder of captives, the torture of criminals, the taking of plunder, or the denigration of women based on his own scripture.

Apparently, there were virtually no Christians in Europe in the Middle Ages, including the Pope and Martin Luther.

Wow, you had to go back to the Middle Ages to find Christians comparable to Muslims today. That is exactly CM’s point. Christians have moved on from the Middle Ages distortion of the religion. Muslims have not moved on. They are stuck in the Middle Ages, perhaps because, as CM also points out, the Middle Ages view of things is much more consistent with the Islamic sacred texts.

SADIE

Islam actually took a step back in the 18th century with Wahabbism (the old Islam just wasn’t pure enough).

Don Quixote: Wow, you had to go back to the Middle Ages to find Christians comparable to Muslims today. That is exactly CM’s point.

Read it again.

Charles Martel: no Christian leader or theologian can call for the violent conversion of pagans to Christianity, nor justify the murder of captives, the torture of criminals, the taking of plunder, or the denigration of women based on his own scripture.

Note the verbal auxiliary, “can”. Christians did point to scripture to justify their violent tactics, and the scriptures haven’t changed, so obviously they can. This includes some of the most important theologians in history.

Religious leaders “can” claim anything at all. Given that CM is smart enough to understand this I read “can . . . based on his own scripture” to mean that “conversion of pagans to Chriatianity . . . the murder of captives, the torture of criminals, the taking of plunder [and] the denigration of of women” would be inconsistent with that scripture. In other words, I read “based on” to mean “consistent with.” He’s right.

Charles Martel

SADIE, thank you for the link to the discussion of the Qu’ran’s origins. For Muslims, the history of the book and the huge inconsistencies between what it claimed for it and what scholars have determined is the truth about it can be downright embarrassing. Ibn Warraq even says there are plausible controversies about whether Mohammed himself existed and whether he bothered when he was alive to begin any sort of systematic compilation of all the suras he’d allegedly been reciting—and abrogating—through the years.

A tangent, but a telling one, is the Qu’ran’s insistence that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity refers to Allah, Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Even a cursory conversation with a Christian would disabuse a modern Muslim of this erroneous notion, but, because the Qu’ran is the eternal and uncreated word of God, then the Christians obviously are lying through their teeth about their own core doctrine.

Kind of like you Jews are always lying about your secret fondness for barbecued pulled pork sandwiches.

SADIE

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

Yet, Martin Luther did justify persecution based on scriptures. You and Charles Martel may disagree with him, but many other theologians have sided with Martin Luther. Oddly enough, vicious wars have been fought over differences with Martin Luther. The same argument applies to Jewish religious views, which have also been used to justify persecution.

Charles Martel: Ibn Warraq even says there are plausible controversies about whether Mohammed himself existed and whether he bothered when he was alive to begin any sort of systematic compilation of all the suras he’d allegedly been reciting—and abrogating—through the years.

And there are plausible historical controversies about both the New and Old Testaments.

Charles Martel: A tangent, but a telling one, is the Qu’ran’s insistence that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity refers to Allah, Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Perhaps you are thinking of this verse:

Qur’an 5:116, And behold! Allah will say: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, ‘Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah’?” He will say: “Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing thou wouldst indeed have known it.

Should we take your views of the Qu’ran as “gospel” over that of the many Islamic scholars who disagree with your interpretation?

Danny Lemieux

Charles M: “For the past few weeks the last thing I’ve been reading before lights out is the Qu’ran. There are occasional lyrical passages in it where Allah has Mohammed recite the glories of creation. But let me tell you, the book is a turgid, endless recitation of Allah’s determination to shove people into Islam’s bordello paradise or torture-filled hell.”

Or, as an Assyrian Christian Iraqi friend of mine put it, “Islam is all about sex and violence”.

Charles Martel

Danny, amen to that.

I had breakfast and took a walk around North Beach in San Francisco yesterday with an old very liberal friend. We got to talking about Islam and he told me about a video he’d seen of a 2007 video of a 15-year-old Arab girl being stoned to death for adultery. The girl had been buried up to her waist and the men of her village then spent the next 30 minutes torturing her to death by hurling both stones and insults at her.

What struck my friend—he’s an atheist, by the way—was what he called a palpable sexual tension about the whole grotesque affair. “You could see them actually excited by their power over this helpless girl, and it was made even stronger by the men’s certainty that this punishment was one of which Allah would approve.”

As we discussed it further, he said that he had always sensed in Middle Eastern men he’d met (Israelis excepted) a hatred toward women that was a combination of contempt for their perceived weakness—thus the desperate desire to suppress any tenderness or empathy in themselves—as well as a deep-seated fear that, given the Muslim perception of women as drop-of-the-hat whores, that they would be overwhelmed by women’s sexuality unless they can control it in almost absolute terms.

As we engage Islam here in America, and try to coax it out of the shadows, it will be very important to hammer home the religion’s antipathy toward women. Aside from romance novel fantasies of being the sultan’s favorite harem booty call, most American women don’t want to be the patsies for a religion that in many ways is like a second grade girl haters club, only incredibly more malevolent.

Hemoglobin

I guess none of the commenters here remember that our allies in Afghanistan and Iraq are Muslims, nor that they have been killed by terrorists in vastly greater numbers than Americans have been, and risk vastly more than any Americans do by opposing them, since even American soldiers in Afghanistan aren’t at risk of having their wives and children murdered by terrorists if they publicly oppose them. Yet our Mustlim allies do risk their own lives, and those of their families, day in and day out, to oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and we Americans reward their loyalty and their courage by insulting them and their religion.

Hi Hemoglobin and thanks for your comment. Of course, moany of those who are our “allies” were already fighting each other. We just pick a side in on-going disputes.

But your underlying point is a good one. Muslims come in all persuasions, as to Judeo-Christians. The problem is that the majority are stuck in the 7th century. Just look at the vast majority of societies in which Muslims hold power. You think we insult Islam. Consider what they (the majority, by no means all) say about us.

Mike Devx

> Yet our Mustlim allies do risk their own lives, and those of their families, day in and day out, to oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and we Americans reward their loyalty and their courage by insulting them and their religion.

I’m always careful to note that I oppose Wahabbi and Salafist Islam, not Islam itself. Some people do mistrust all practitioners of Islam, but I can’t speak for those people. I oppose Christian terrorists in the same manner I oppose Islamic terrorists; yet I do not see Christian preachers (in this day and age) honoring terrorists and encouraging terrorists the way I see some imams doing so. It is a mistake, I think, to not see that there are virulent strains of orthodox Islam out there today advocating violence, murder and the severest forms of oppression.

Those Muslim allies are risking their lives and their families to support us. You claim that our insults to Islam harm them. There is some truth to that – when the insults are broadly based and unjustified. Have you *also* considered the effects of current administration policy of “cutting and running”? Of abandoning those allies to their fate as we decide to simply disappear? After promising them that if they supported us, we would support and protect them from their enemies? That betrayal, by the Obama administration, has a far more harmful effect than some people engaging in criticism of Islam that may be too broad.

They don’t really care about what our opinions about their religion are. They do care when we leak all their names and the Taliban comes and executes their entire clan. They might be a little bit miffed about that and think, all you spais and loose lip guys out there are part of the problem, not the solution.